The Hurun Research Institute and GroupM Knowledge co-published the white paper of the Hurun Wealth Report 2011 on Wednesday, Beijing Times reported.

According to the paper, more than 960,000 people on the Chinese mainland have a personal wealth exceeding 10 million yuan, up 9.7 percent from last year. The average age of the millionaires is 39 years old, with 70 percent male and 30 percent female.

Beijing, Guangdong and Shanghai are the top cities home to those with a personal wealth of over 10 million yuan, with 170,000, 157,000 and 132,000 millionaires in each city respectively.

The number of billionaires reached 60,000, with an average age of 43 years old. Around 4,000 of the billionaire group have a personal wealth of more than 1 billion yuan and approximately 200 have a wealth of more than 10 billion yuan.

The rise in the number of billionaires in China was due to the 10.3-percent GDP growth in 2010 and soaring real estate prices, the paper said.